If you hang around with the horse drivers for a bit, you will soon hear some visitor or office worker or tourist come over with an Irish brogue and ask them what county they come from, “where are your people from?” Invariably, somebody knows somebody’s cousin or brother or father, and they talk of the old country and what’s happening there and the insanity of the carriage horse battle, about which every single person in Ireland seems to have heard, and they shake their heads in utter disbelief at the idea that pulling a carriage is abuse for a working horse.

They say when Liam Neeson walks in the park, he stops to talk to the Irish drivers, many of them are from his county in Northern Ireland, they say they all talk about their mothers and aunts and how they are doing over there. I have no personal experience of this kind of thing, the Jews I know don’t walk up to strangers and talk about their mothers and it is not done in the country,  but I think being Irish isn’t something you ever leave behind. I met some Russian and Ukranian drivers and some Mexican drivers, but the Irish thing is quite strong in the carriage trade, you hear it in the talk and you see it in their faces.